


Do not doubt our sacrifices, spoiled only by love

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Time War Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight and Romana at the end of the Time War. Weird metaphysical matrix violence or something. Not quite sure what this is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do not doubt our sacrifices, spoiled only by love

**Author's Note:**

> I do a lot of playing with tense and personal pronouns in this. Hopefully it all makes sense and is at least somewhat grammatically correct.
> 
> * * *

  
_Waiting to tell the doctor_  
That he failed  
And that I failed

Still thinking about you  
And the sparks between us  
Dull, milky and peculiar now  
Like dimes that have been dipped  
In mercury too long ago

-Leonard Cohen, 'Waiting to tell the doctor'

***

 

_"Some good"_

She remembers those words now as if they had been formed by her own tongue, called into existence by her own mind, ready to justify actions which could never be justified no matter the decision or outcome.

_"Out of their evil"_

Everything falls about her in tatters, ripped shards of blackness punctured by only a few darkened stars. And she falls too.

Rosy cheeks paled by the extreme chill of space. Her hair, first blond, now white as crystal, makes an angel's halo to disguise her sin. So fragile, so beautiful even now… This was the end, and it was not prepared for. Her fingers, blue nails cracked to their base, grip a blade of carved bone. Her eyes fill with death and sorrow at the task she has been sent to do.

_"Must come"_

What must or mustn't come? Wasn't everything insignificant against this giant backdrop, this universe that extended until forever? Even they could not see it all, or tame it all. That was ever the folly of those congested, stern-set politicians she/he had contested; they had thought that they were somehow significant.

None of us were.

And that one thought makes her smile against Fate's cruel glance, because if her people were not significant against the soaring possibilities of space and time than neither were their enemy's, and perhaps that was some hope.

_"Do I have the right?"_

She can feel and remember his indecision, because she is him and he is she: they are/were/will be inexorably linked by the tangled fibres of the Matrix, the last undamaged thread of time, and the only place where their plan can succeed. The President and the Renegade — the criminal responsible — both of them brought and bonded to this impasse. To pull back would mean death as the tangled fibres of consciousness caught and snarled. To go forward…

To pull apart every mind and erase it from history, and then finally to erase themselves. To burn an empty world and the evil that surrounded it. The black locust ships that meant only to destroy.

_"Out of their evil must come…"_

But she cannot see it, and perhaps never would; though he still tries feebly to convince her. He chants it like a spell, like it can change the mind of Fate as they raise their skull-carved daggers and begin.

They do it together: ripping at the tatters, pulling apart the fabric of the world that birthed them. Damning themselves to nothing. He chokes a bird song. She slashes a poem into frayed syllables before setting it alight. Death and darkness and ashes. She/He becomes the destroyer of dreams, lives, and aeons of carefully guarded time.

_The world trembles with artificial tectonic hell. Somewhere outside their frenzy of destruction the enemy has disabled the temporal shields. Somewhere the bombs fall to snuff out more innocent lives, and the generators powering their terrible solution sustain a critical hit. Somewhere…_

She/He slashed and burned and desecrated until finally nothing was left and they stood facing each other across the void. Tousle-haired and sweating, wild eyes caught up with every level of passion, they raised their bloodied knives one last time.

But she could not kill him. And so the solution failed.

 

 

 

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=12895>


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